All-Grain Blonde Ale

thesweetlycool · 03-31-2009, 08:56 PM

We brewed our first All-Grain beer last night with 13 lbs. of grain and a pound of honey. We used a pound of Crystal Malt and so I believe this beer will be much darker than we were going for.

However.. the OG of this beer (w/ the honey of course) was 1.068! This is higher than the first stout we brewed and im wondering if the OG was so high because of all the honey? Or will this beer end up being a very high alcohol content beer?

mkade · 03-31-2009, 10:05 PM

13 lbs is a lot of grain for a blond ale, so i'm not surprised you're higher on OG. What type of crystal did you use? Remember that wort will always look darker than it actually is. Beer's law: Absorbance = molar absortivity * concentration * path length

**BrewBrain** · 03-31-2009, 10:28 PM

Looks like a 10 gallon recipe. Call it a double blonde

thesweetlycool · 04-01-2009, 06:14 PM

The Crystal was 20L... which is the lighter stuff... we had 10 lbs. of normal barley, a pound of honey malt, a pound of pislner, a pound of 20L Crystal and a pound of flaked maze. Oh and also the pound of honey we added 5 mins before the end of the boil.

It smells extrememly sweet coming out of the fermenter... so we'll see i i guess.. haha

thesweetlycool · 04-01-2009, 06:42 PM

By "Normal Barley" I mean 2-row

Daddymem · 04-01-2009, 07:32 PM

That is a lot of grains. I'm brewing up my Willam's Notty Blonde Ambition with 10# 2 row and 1# carapils (5 gallons) and that just makes it in the standards for a blonde.

WBC · 04-01-2009, 08:12 PM

I find that if you make strong beer that you must have an adequate volume of darker grains and stronger hops to help hide the alcohol. It's the first pint that you have to be concerned about but after that it is less of a concern as you are....

carnevoodoo · 04-01-2009, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thesweetlycool

The Crystal was 20L... which is the lighter stuff... we had 10 lbs. of normal barley, a pound of honey malt, a pound of pislner, a pound of 20L Crystal and a pound of flaked maze. Oh and also the pound of honey we added 5 mins before the end of the boil.

It smells extrememly sweet coming out of the fermenter... so we'll see i i guess.. haha

What is the purpose of a pound of pils in there?

A pound of honey malt is going to be a lot for this, I'm thinking. Most of the honey will ferment out and this beer will get pretty dry because the honey is mostly fermentable. And the honey malt has an SRM of 25, which will be higher than your 20L

I'm going to imagine when you try this it will be very malty, and probably have a nutty sweet profile to it, but dry. I would think this would be too malty cloyingly sweet for my tastes, but you might like it.

carnevoodoo · 04-01-2009, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WBC

I find that if you make strong beer that you must have an adequate volume of darker grains and stronger hops to help hide the alcohol. It's the first pint that you have to be concerned about but after that it is less of a concern as you are....

That's not true. Darker grain is not necessary for a big beer. You might have to hop more aggressively, but dark grain won't matter.

thesweetlycool · 04-01-2009, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carnevoodoo

What is the purpose of a pound of pils in there?

I'm going to imagine when you try this it will be very malty, and probably have a nutty sweet profile to it, but dry. I would think this would be too malty cloyingly sweet for my tastes, but you might like it.

I saw some recipies for Blonde Ales that called for Pilsner malt... and since i don't really know what Pilsner malt is.. I made sure that some of it was included.

I would be fine with a malty/nutty/sweet beer... we only used 1oz total of Cascade hops .5 oz for 60 mins and .5 for 30 min.. so hopefully the hop character will be high enough.